Let's Learn Everything!

Maximum Fun

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper learn about anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or fanfiction, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything! Join our Discord, email us, and follow us everywhere at www.LetsLearnEverything.com

  1. 1 HR AGO

    89: Understanding Blood & Peculiar Percussion

    Blood! We all have it, but how much do we know about it? And more importantly, what was the journey of understanding to get there? And just how deep can the history of these peculiar percussion instruments go? Well we'll be criss-crossing across the planet today to find out! Images we Talk About: The Quijada Son Jarocho Quijada Video The Clapper The Clapper in Performance Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:35) Understanding Blood (00:49:38) Peculiar Percussion (01:24:41) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: 5 gallons of blood over 60,000 miles, humoral theory, phlegm - yellow bile - black bile - blood, I’m from house sanguine - our fire is strongest in our season of spring, humoral theory was around for 1500 YEARS, blood letting, a leeches detour just for Caroline, very few leeches actually suck blood, the exportation of leeches for blood letting made them endangered, we nearly killed the leeches in nearly killing us, leeches are sometimes used today after reconstructive surgery for their enzymes, Nafis’ circulatory system would not be believed for 400 YEARS, these time skips are killing me, Harvey was ALSO NOT BELIEVED, we stan Harvey cause he got witches acquitted, the government and church’s ban on blood transfusions, 1818 was the first recorded successful transfusion, 1658 Jan Swammerdam first saw “oval particles” but this was 7 years before the word “cell” was used, pop quiz on what the parts of blood do, don’t draw your blood while driving, blue and green blood in crustaceans and leeches, antigens and antibodies, “I hope this will be of some use to mankind”, sodium citrate helped blood stay fresh for transfusion, god medicine fucking rules, we reinvented humors with blood personality types, the humors are stored on the antigens obviously, “do you know what my blood type is, for no reason, I’m fine, it’s a podcast thing”, Tom has a slumdog millionaire moment because he was working on another video, there are 48 recognized blood groups each with dozens of antigens, having your own bloodtype means having your own bespoke horoscope, we’re averaging one blood group discovered a year, the journey of understanding blood is the journey of science, it’s hard to tell if rocks were used for a cup song routine, Caroline & Ella fall in love with the quijada, it’s a literal death rattle, “play my bones when I die”, make a jawbone that won’t break, the much sillier vibraslap can still sound good, vibraslap on All Along the Watchtower, the whip/clapper/slap stick, comedia dell’arte, the slap stick was a literal stick to make a slap sound, the christmas rise in slapsticks, the armenia alchemist Avedis Zildjian, since we were working with metal we went listen to this taaah tah tah taaah, a perfeclty clear cymbal is just a bell, a cymbal is crafted chaos to sound good, mmm this wine is very trash but not pingy, now we know Ella’s partner wasn’t just making shit up about cymbal sounds, confirming our sources for this wild Zildjian story, what do you think about this instrument?? I can’t stop making chocolate cymbals! Ringo made people want to drum, finding out Sabian is from the Zildjian family is like finding out Wendy’s last name is McDonald, a percussionist can literally touch history from all across the world, it’s about the reviews we don’t read. Sources: Science Museum: Blood J Thromb Haemost: Discovery of the Cardiovascular System Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections: Humoral Theory MedicineNet: Is Bloodletting Still Used Today? Fresh Water Habitats Press Release: Medicinal Leech Breeding The New Yorker: The History of Blood NCBI Book: The ABO Blood groups Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science: The Discovery of Blood Cells Red Cross Blood Services: History Of Blood Transfusions 1628 To Now NCBI Bookshelf: Blood and the Cells it Contains The Conversation: Essays on blood: why do we actually have it? Blood at 70: its roots in the history of hematology and its birth PMC: A Brief History of Human Blood Groups Japan Experience: Blood Types in Japan The Conversation: More Blood Types than you Think CBS News: New Blood Type The Conversation: Gwada-negative --- Kabeleh Bah Playing the Quijada Salsa Blanca on the Quijada John Jeremiah Sullivan on the Quijada Son Jarocho Quijada Video History of the Vibraslap Boston Symphony Orchestra on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2 Britannica on Slapstick's Etymology The AMNH's Slap Stick The Cymbal Test Video NPR on Zildjian's History NYT on Zildjian's History

    1h 30m
  2. 17 JUL

    88: The Evolution of the Placebo & Postage Stamp Art

    Chances are you know what a placebo is, but... how does it really work? And what can its evolution teach us about science, medicine, and ethics? And how much art can fit a tiny postage stamp? Well enough to fill a whole history of debate, drama, and ducks. Images we Talk About: Drafts of England's First Stamp Sydney Views Stamp The Train Stamp 2025 Duck Stamp Winners McBroom's Spite Duck Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:20) The Evolution of Placebos (00:57:13) Postage Stamp Art (01:41:17) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about:  The word placebo has escaped academic containment, fake mourners saying “I will please the lord”, placebo paint on birds wings, placebo as sham, The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism, not that kind of animal magnetism, placebo as psychology, is this going to be a running bit, defining placebo not in reference to something else, “a person’s psychological response to being treated”, things like healing through time or pressure to answer are Not placebo effects, placebo effects are tricky to study, animals can get the placebo effect, goo goo ga ga am I in the contwal gwoup? conditioning rats that a smell means reduced pain, the internal and external factors of placebo, the placebo effect is actually doing things in your brain, of course we talked about that before on episode TWENTY EIGHT, Ella loves brain action, you can consciously fail a placebo but unconsciously pass it, the nocebo effect, it may be just in your head but your head is a lot of things, the murky ethics of placebos, doctors are mostly prescribing harmless placebos when patients ask for one, Caroline & Ella’s sleeping pill and recovery position placebos, HOLY SHIT PLACEBO EVOLVED INTO CHARIZARD HELL YEAH, some placebos work when you tell people it’s a placebo, placebo pills take 2 twice daily, wait is this actually just about the importance of transparent and accessible and trustworthy medical care?? the American Philatelic Society, Tom used stamps as stickers, Ella’s friend’s giant mimic stamp, the public was aroused by post office reform - not just us! every contestant of the first stamp contest was revoked, it took 4 artists to design the first stamp, no monarch stamps unless they’re hot, the Universal Postal Union is the second oldest international organization, the absolutely HATED train stamp, philatelic propaganda, Operation Cornflakes, the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee’s incredible process, so you’re saying we can’t make an Iraq War stamp, so you’re saying the UK can make a 9/11 stamp, stamps are of the most visible pieces of art, the duck stamp is the only art competition sponsored by the government,  the super bowl of wild life art, are you a celebrity if oyu haven’t won a DEGOT? stamp advisors with reduction glasses, duck stamp royalty, Broome’s incredible spite art, stamps didn’t have to be art - but we’re glad they are. Sources: The Americal Philatelic Society The Postal Museum London: The Penny Black Swiss National Museum: Stamps Wiki: Postage Stamp Design Linns Stamps: New South Wales Pictorial Stamp Smithsonian Postal Museum: International Philately Universal Posta Union 2011 Book: Book of History of the Postage Stamps of the United States of America US Postal Service: Creating U.S. Postage Stamps The Postal Museum London: Stamp Design WWT: Duck Stamps Scientific America: The Duck Stamp Fish and Wildlife Service: 2024 Duck Stamp Winner Million Dollar Duck Video- Taylor and McBroom Rivalry New York Times: Rising to Glory on the Wings of Ducks Print Magazine: The Extraordinary Design Journey of a Stamp—From Quasi-Secret Society to Perforated Perfection Image: The First Stamp Design Evolution Image: 1869 Pictorial Stamp- 3 Cent Train Stamp 2024 Duck Stamp Entries Image: McBroom: Comrade Tim Taylor --- Etymology of Placebos & Placebo History Placebo Review Wikipedia Placebo in History Beecher's The Powerful Placebo The Powerful Placebo: Fact or Fiction? Nature Overview: Placebo - Honesty Fakery Textbook Chapter: Placebo Analgesia in Rodents The Neuroscience of Placebo Effects Benedetti's Great 2 Placebos Experiment NPR on Prescribing Placebos Guardian on Prescribing Placebos Kaptchuk's Great Open Label Placebo Study Finniss et al. Placebo Review

    1h 47m
  3. 3 JUL

    87: Mating Rituals & True Crime

    Just how complicated can animal mating rituals be, and why did they even evolve them at all? And why is true crime Everywhere, and what can we learn from breaking down what makes it feel so icky? Also see Tom's new Game Show in NYC this Sunday! www.OurFindingsShow.com Things we Talk About: Deathwatch Beetle Red-Winged Blackbird House Finch Lesser Florican Video Dance Analysis Video 1 Dance Analysis Video 2 Cruell Step-Dames Carolina Buddies Murder Ballad Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:04) Mating Rituals (01:03:01) True Crime (01:46:08) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: the adorable death watch beetle, the deep sea “ah fuck it - you’re here” approach, of course the man on the podcast thinks reproduction is easy, why are people on hinge so picky, hermaphrodite sea bunnies, there’s plenty of fish in the sea and the sea is fucking huge, sexual ornaments, peacock feathers made Darwin SICK, sexual ornaments to identify you’re doing it with the right species, you can hang your sexual ornaments all year long for other purposes, finch dating shows, carotenoids from skilled foraging make a brighter pigment is an indicator trait, or just go to a tanning salon, going to the gym is the same - false muscles, active at night - gives you a fright - active at day - wants to get laid, wow flies give eye contact during courting - that’s better than a lot of humans, the fly cha cha slide, drosophila simlish, nuptial gifts, Women! Want! Regurgitated Nutrient Liquid! the arms race of jumping birds, the “I’ll have what she’s having theory”, dancing mannequins, intermediate level of asymmetric arm movement, if anything the study shows how comical it is to try to boil down human mating, the famous shirt smelling study, what are you trying to show with a human mating study? we shouldn’t be reductive for human mating or for animal mating either, ascribing the gender binary to worms, there is no one easy tip to dating in nature, a double banger for nuance, early crime tabloids like Illustrated Police News, Jack the Ripper was dubbed by the press after all, the prison chaplain’s broadsides, nature’s cruel step-dames or matchless monsters of the female sex, I can’t stop myself from coming up with names fro these murders, true crime lit was a best seller at public hangings, some broadsides sold 30x more than the news, the unmissable attraction of La Morgue de Paris, American Murder Ballads didn’t need you to be literate, true crime as an indicator of media trends, the vicious cycle of true crime consumption, icky entertainment motivations, working against the wishes of survivors, if only the victim had had our sponsor - simply safe, the commodification of people’s suffering, what stories do we choose not to tell, true crime seems to say there is “right” kind of victim, but true crime isn’t irredeemable. Sources: Combermere Abbey: A Hard Day’s Night For The Beetles Padi: Sea Bunny Sea Slug Courtship and Reproduction 1978 Paper: Ultraviolet reflection and its behavioral role in the courtship of the sulfur butterflies  1972 Paper: The Role of the Epaulets in the Red-Winged Blackbird, (Agelaius phoeniceus) Social System Audubon: Are Brightly Colored Males Really the Best Mates? Scientific America: Why are male birds more colorful than female birds? National Science Foundation: Bright colors in the animal kingdom: Why some use them to impress and others to intimidate 2019 Paper: Facial masculinity does not appear to be a condition-dependent male ornament and does not reflect MHC heterozygosity in humans Yale News: Yale study reveals mating tip for bird species: You should be dancing The Guardian: Dinosaurs performed dances to woo mates, according to new evidence Northumbria University: Study identifies high quality female dance movements 1995: MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans 2023 Paper: Do humans agree on which body odors are attractive, similar to the agreement observed when rating faces and voices? 2017 Paper: Humans as a model species for sexual selection research 2009 Paper: Dance dance attribution: exploring the relationship between dance and attractiveness in intial perceptions  2020 Paper: Mutual mate choice and its benefits for both sexes --- Podcast.co: How Many True Crime Podcasts Crime Reads: The Rise of the True Crime Podcaster JSTOR: The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre Henry Goodcole: Nature’s Cruel Steppe Dames NYT: The Bloody History of True Crime Lit Wellcome Collection: Paris Morgue JSTOR: The Paris Morgue Provided Ghoulish Entertainment JSTOR: The Murder Ballad Was the Original True Crime Podcast Psychology Today: Why the True Crime Audience Is Predominantly Female SAGE article: Why women are drawn to tales of rape, murder and serial killers NYT: Is Our True-Crime Obsession Doing More Harm Than Good? Gawker: True Crime is Rottnig Our Brains TIME: The Human Cost of Binge-Watching True Crime Series Reclamation: The Fascination With All That is Morbid and Macabre Binghamton University: True Crime Adaptations and How the Public Surveils University of Oregon: The true crime genre is popular, but is it ethical?

    1h 51m
  4. 5 JUN

    86: Eyevolution 2 Eyelectric Boogeyeloo & Digital Piracy w/ Sabrina Cruz

    How many eyes do these animals have, and more importantly what are they doing with them? And how long has copyright piracy been around, and would YOU download a car? Also Ella finally drops her fake british accent. Images we Talk About: Bullfrog Parietal Eye Bumble Bee Ocelli Scallop Eyes Scallop Eye Mirrors The Home Taping is Killing Music Logo Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:04:01) Eyevolution II (00:56:16) Digital Piracy (01:45:06) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about:  How many jingles does this man have up his sleeve?? 2 eyes or not 2 eyes, what do you need glasses for - to see boobs? why have an odd number of eyes when it’s a BOGO deal developmentally, even more amazing than his eye of agamoto - Dr Strange has 2 camera eyes, “I grow fearful of the untrue eye”, bull frogs can’t doom scroll, the pineal eye is a skylight to the pineal gland, ommatidia means little eye, each compound eye only sees one image from the thousand of ommatidia, this is Caroline’s first eyevolution rodeo - we can’t answer all the questions, now you can be annoying correcting people about bug vision, ocelli are also called little eyes, triangular ocelli flight stabilization, Robobee, ocelli are useful because they’re auxiliary, they’re a fast different readout, there are so many more interesting sci fi choices for eyes, maybe they evolved ocelli to not crash when they see a sexy bug, having zero eyes would be going to far, oh wait nevermind, where we’re going we don’t need eyes, “not the implications”, well I’ll answer one of those questions, what do you need eyes for looking at boobs? YEAH I DO ACTUALLY, he complex eyes like a telescope of scallops, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE A BRAIN, have we gone too far? the living square mirrors in scallop eyes, no one believed scallop TV would work, fair use and fair dealings, early book sellers were book copiers, authors did not make profits on early copies, Martial was the first person to be reposted on 9gag, the library of alexandria operated like OpenAI, book publishers after the printing press were like Universal Music Group - concerned over their rights - not artists, crown approved ABC books, the mid 1600s is the first use of piracy of intellectual property, ruining vinyl records with the cassette tape skull and crossbones, the 2013 Hugh Jackman Oscars performance, Napster’s origins and Metallica’s not so metal killing of it, Piracy was a technical and social phenomenon, YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A FONT, video game antipiracy that reminds you of the creative mind behind the product, none of this is legal advice, the cost of piracy is easy to calculate but the benefit is impossible to measure. Sources: The Parietal Eye Compound Eyes Holger Krapp's Fantastic Paper on Ocelli 2022 Paper on Ocelli Otacilia Khezu The Scallop's Eyes Scallop TV Ed Yong on Scallop Eyes --- Book: In Stock or Special Order Coda: A Short History of Book Piracy Book: A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects Bob Leggitt: The Threat of the Audio Cassette 2025 Paper: Digital Piracy 2009 Abstract: Understanding Online Piracy: The Truth about Illegal File Sharing The Guardian: Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy Frontier Economics: Will piracy make us walk the plank? Viaaccess: The evolving attitudes of Millennials and Generation Z to video piracy Huck: Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content Video- Piracy, It's a Crime Image- Home Taping Kills Music BBC: Getting inside a downloader's head Slate: Goodbye to Piracy Youtube Video: Mary Spender- The Birth of Music Piracy Britannica: intellectual-property law PlagatismToday: How a Reverse Copyright Filled the Library of Alexandria Wiki: Napster 2010: Digital piracy among consumers in a developing economy: A comparison of multiple theory-based models Forbes: The Unwilling Digital Pirate: A Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity

    1h 50m
  5. 22 MAY

    85: David Bennett & Why Humans Like Harmony in Music

    What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it? Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony? (00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions (01:24:04) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about:  Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen academically, the musical expert said Caroline has good music taste, I’m down hereeeeee, harmony is just the interaction of any two notes, Tom thinks about high school choir harmony all the time, even babies like harmony, even the oldest flutes have the same holes in them, octaves are so similar we call them the same note, watchmojo ranking of intervals, Carly Rae Jepsen - It Has Many Notes!, a spicy dissonant interval can be good in moderation - like a spicy seasoning in food, Tom is just grinning getting to ask these music questions, we invited you as a guest and you bring this dissonance to our home?? the messy sounding tones match to messy looking ratios, why can we even distinguish pitch? we use pitch in communication so much, animal sounds are the only things that make pitch, animals can recognize intervals, we call bird song song - but to them it’s probably more like language, it sounds cheesy - but in every human voice there’s a harmony, we’re asking the question backwards - we needed to understand harmony to be able to decipher a pitch, hearing the difference between notes IN YOUR HEAD, what we hear in our head is different than the world around us, harmonies are audio cheesecake - something we evolved to enjoy pumped to the max, “we can make cheesecake with our mouths”, cheesecake is just molecules, did you not have to learn human evolution in music school? oh my guilty pleasures are Tchaikovsky’s later works, Ella humble bragging about her spotify wrapped, this is going to come off as hostile but hasn’t enough already been said about the Beatles, how different generations experience the Beatles, more like DavidLegoStopMotion, it took 5 years after a dissertation on how to have a career as a musician on youtube, try song ideas and listen to them later, music theory is Descriptive not Prescriptive, liking technical music, the only way you’ll practice is if you enjoy it, the dopamine hit from the cheesecake of practice, can you send that advice to my mom 10 years ago, but you did practice… yeah, teenagers are good at learning instruments because they have free time, start learning music with the music that you love, learning sheet music at the same time as playing is like learning to write as you’re learning to speak, you learn to write after you’ve practiced speaking for years, you’re full of good ideas David who knew.

    1h 29m
  6. 8 MAY

    84: Tree Talk & Trading Card Art

    Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history? Images we Talk About:   Trade Cards 3 Modern Trading Cards Yuka Morii's Cards Terror Hyalopterus Lemure Preposterous Proportions Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:08) Tree Talk (00:52:16) Trading Card Art (01:33:47) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! The answer is yes maybe sometimes and no, talking tree folklore, communication as transferring information, The Secret Life of Trees, Caroline WAS vegan, plants feel pain - GOOD, tree self defense, secondary metabollites, you got me AND Ella to write that down, tannin defense mechanism, volatile organic compounds, giraffes avoiding nearby leaves after eating, maybe trees are eavesdropping, mycorrhizal networks, could it be diffusion or a baby tree suckling on its mother, do a stanford prisoner experiment for trees, that tree is giving mother, mother trees - altruistic fungi - and the perils of plant personification, literally talking to trees, your first priority shouldn’t be to not be boring - maybe second, respect for the organisms that are fundamentally unlike us - their unfathomable lives, the modern boom of trading cards, trade cards, mass produced color images were cool and novel, how many credits for that chromo?  absurd advertising from the 1800s, anthropomorphic fruits and veggies were all the rage, trade cards were a microcosm of marketing-invention-and collecting, Ella’s baseball impression, looking at a mainstream sport through the nerdiest lens imaginable, cigarette baseball cards, Doug McWilliams photographed 8% of all major league baseball players, oh right photography is an art, and so is building relationships with players, cards began to stand on their own, Richard Garfield wanted baseball cards for nerds, Magic and Pokemon credit their artists - but YuGiOh does not, Yuka Morii’s sculpture cards, Adam Rex’s Terror, Richard Thomas’ Hyalopterous Lemure, Julie Baroh flipping off her classmates, companies screwing over artists, it’s still art in spite of being a piece of cardboard. Sources: 2010 Paper: Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signals New York Times: The Social Life of Forests Book: The Secret Life Of Plants National Geographic: Plants can talk. Yes, really. Here’s how. 2025 Pape: Shrub anti-herbivore defenses exhibit non-linear and varied responses to increased herbivore density 1990 Paper: Acacia Tree Kills Antelope Book: Ethylene in Plant Biology BBC News: Plants send SOS signal to insects TED ED: Can Plants Talk to Each Other? 2015 Paper: Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities 1997 Paper: Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field 2008 Paper: Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings: evidence for an ectomycorrhizal pathway Scientific America: Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi? 2023 Paper: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests 2024 Paper: Mother trees, Altruistic Fungi, and the Perils of Plant Personification Facts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of Trees Video: Project gives 200-year-old Dublin tree ‘a voice’ [Scientific America: The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading](The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading | Scientific American) Article: The World’s First Talking Tree Helps Young People Reconnect with Nature Smithsonian: Do Trees Talk to Each Other? --- Cornell University on History of Trade Cards History of Chromolithography American Antiquarian Society on Trade Cards PBS on Trade Cards Baseball Card Photography History Doug McWilliams via Baseball Hall of Fame Doug McWilliams Interview with SABR Doug McWilliams NYTimes Interview Richard Garfield on Magic's Creation Yuka Morii's Pokemon Card Art Magic Artist Julie Baroh's Interview Magic Artist Donato Giancola's Points Against Artist Policies Magic Artist Melissa Benson's Artist Advice

    1h 40m

About

Science communicators Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper learn about anything and everything interesting! Each episode they teach each other about a science topic, and learn about a miscellaneous topic. Whether it's bugs on drugs, temporal illusions, or fanfiction, there's so much out there, so let's learn everything! Join our Discord, email us, and follow us everywhere at www.LetsLearnEverything.com

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